Back
in May of this year, I, along with several thousand of my friends, received a
press release about a new book by Jacques Vallee about a reported UFO crash
near San Antonio, New Mexico in 1945. It predated Roswell by nearly two years,
though some of the elements seemed to foreshadow that case. I put up a
preliminary analysis of the case which you can read here:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-san-antonio-ufo-crash.html
And,
there was a story about fragments recovered in the crash that had been
analyzed. That information can be found here:
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/photo/ufo-crash-remnants-ii-photo/
I
did have the opportunity to read the book and provided an analysis, more of a
review, which can be read here:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/06/trinity-best-kept-secret-critique.html
Don
Schmitt and I discussed this last spring when the information first broke. Don
said that he had talked with one of the primary witnesses about the case. Our
discussion, in the first segment, can be heard here:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv/adp20210512ep157emdonschmitt
And
finally, I had the opportunity to speak with both Jacques Vallee and Paola
Harris about their book about the San Antonio crash. Most of the conversation
was with Vallee. You can access that information and listen to the show here:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/06/x-zone-broadcast-network-jacques-vallee.html
https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv/adp20210602ep162emjacquesvalleeandpaoloh_1
All
this was triggered by a peer reviewed journal article, Physical Analyses in
Ten of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples, that is available
online now, though the scheduled publication is January 2022. It has very
little to do with the San Antonio crash but does provide some insight into the
reason Vallee seems to accept this tale. In it, Vallee writes about ten
incidents in which strange and unexplained debris has been recovered in cases
associated with UFO sightings, or suspected UFO sightings.
 |
| Jacques Vallee |
Among
those ten cases is one that is an obvious hoax and that is the report from
Maury Island in early June 1947. It is clear from the investigations by the
military and by private UFO researchers that the case is a hoax, though Vallee
suggests there might be something of value in it. You can read about that here:
https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/07/maury-island-ufo-crash.html
For
those interested, you can read more about this hoax in Crash: When UFOs Fall
from the Sky; Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-Ups, and in
Jerry Clark’s massive UFO Encyclopedia. George Earley published a two-part
expose of the hoax in Fate in March and April 1981 and a three-part
expose in UFO magazine in October 2010, January 2011 and October 2011.
Some
of the other cases are shaky at best. The source of some of those seems to be
Frank Edwards who often wrote from memory without bothering to check the facts.
More than once I have found substantial errors in works by Edwards, though he
often gets a few of the facts right.
It
is with the Council Bluffs, Iowa, case from December 17, 1977, that Vallee
devotes the most space to in the article, including an analysis of the metal
that was recovered. There seems to be no doubt that something fell into the Big
Lake Park during the evening. Three people were on their way to a local store
when they spotted the glowing, reddish object about five hundred feet in the
air falling straight down. It disappeared behind the trees and there was a
flash of bluish-white light shooting upwards suggesting an impact.
Witnesses
summoned the fire department and Assistant Fire Chief Jack Moore arrived in
time to see the still glowing molten mass. He said that it was some sort of
metal that couldn’t be bent or broken that was covering an area of about four
by six feet. They did attempt to alert the Air Force, but this was several
years after the closure of Project Blue Book and the Air Force officers at Offutt
Air Force Base weren’t interested.
There
were other witnesses and most of them were interviewed. Their stories all
basically matched about a glowing object falling to the ground. For a time
after crashing, it, whatever it was, threw off sparks reminding the witnesses
of those old-fashioned sparklers that were once among the few Fourth of July
“fireworks” allowed in Iowa.
Samples
of the metal were collected and subjected to testing at several labs including
those at Iowa State University. The metal was high-carbon steel of
terrestrial origin. There was nothing in the samples to suggest an alien
technology, though no one could explain where the metal originated or what the
object was that fell into the park. There were a couple of manufacturing plants
in the area at the time that might have been the source, but no one could
explain how the glowing metal had gotten from the plants to the park or why it
seemed to have fallen from the sky.
There are those who
suggest that what fell hadn’t actually landed directly on the levee, but had
fallen into the lake. They thought a search of the lake by divers might offer
an explanation. To date, that hasn’t been done.
There is one part of
the paper that is quite interesting. According to Vallee, the Ubatuba, Brazil,
sample that was seen to fall onto the beach and into the Atlantic Ocean, did
not happen in September, 1957, as most of us believed. The metal was actually
recovered in 1933 or 1934 and wasn’t sent to the magazine writer in Brazil
until 1957. The man who originally brought this to our attention, Dr. Olavo
Fontes, a colleague of Coral and Jim Lorenzen, presented a number of dubious
UFO reports in the 1960s. This might have been one of them.
Ubatuba samples have
been analyzed by many labs over the years and the consensus seems to be of
extremely pure magnesium. While interesting, the case was originally plagued by
the lack of a solid provenance. Although the magazine writer was identified,
the actual source, the person who sent it to him, was unknown. Vallee has made
that an even bigger problem suggesting that the date used by all of us is wrong
as well.
At
the end of the day, we are again treated to a number of dubious cases, some of
them obvious hoaxes, but provided the wrappings of science. We have analyses of
the cases, but if the metal is part of the hoax, then any conclusion drawn is
worthless. And, if the metal is found to be of Earthly origin, then what do we
have. Nothing that takes us to the extraterrestrial except the claims of
strange objects associated with the finds and even that isn’t always the case